While Nick Sirianni is almost always reluctant to reveal any morsel of injury information, Vic Fangio is not.
Speaking during his Tuesday morning press conference, the Philadelphia Eagles defensive coordinator revealed that he expects Nakobe Dean to play in the team’s Sunday Wild Card game against the San Francisco 49ers.
Dean suffered a hamstring injury during the Eagles’ Week 16 win over the Washington Commanders. He then missed Philly’s next two games, though it’s unclear if he could’ve played in Week 18 if the team really needed him to do so.
Regardless, Dean is on track to return to the starting lineup for the Eagles’ first playoff game. 2025 first-round pick Jihaad Campbell played relatively well in Dean’s absence but the latter is clearly the more advanced player at this point in time. It’ll be interesting to see if Fangio still finds some snaps for Campbell against San Francisco.
With Dean set to be a free agent after this season, it’s possible that he’s entering his final game(s) with the Eagles. If the salary cap didn’t exist, keeping Dean would be an easy call … but that’s not the reality of the situation.
By the way: while the Eagles are getting healthier are linebacker, the 49ers are really banged up at that position. We’ll see if the Eagles can actually take advantage of that weakness this time, unlike they were able to when they played a banged up Chicago Bears defense.
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